Thursday, March 4, 2010

Sweet cravings

I cant really tell how I got into cooking. I can remember my grandma coming over to take care of me and my sister when we were younger. Grandma always cooked a good meal for us, and made sure we ate right. Later on when my mom retired she started baking, so we always had something sweet at home. I still need to ask her if I can post her famous Cheesecake recipe, maybe one day I will write about it. Its very rare that I make something sweet, even though I have a sweet tooth. I'm an Oreo guy, going to DQ to get a Blizzard, or just bringing home some brownies is fine by me. However, if I want something sweet, and want to stay on the healthy side, I do make some no bake Apple Oatmeal cookies. I learned this recipe at the only cooking class I have taken. It was at a local organic store and it was about eating raw foods. I simplified the recipe a bit, and it is still tasty and so easy.You will need:

2 medium Apples 2 cups Oatmeal 1 cup raisins½ teaspoon of Cinnamon

As you can see there is no flour or sugar for this recipe. These cookies get their sweetness from the apples. Take 1 cup of oatmeal and put it in the blender so it gets pulverized. Mix with the other cup of oatmeal. Now shred the 2 apples with the skin on and mix in with the oatmeal. I use a wooden spoon to mix everything together. Finally, add the raisins and cinnamon. The moisture from the apples and the pulverized oatmeal keeps everything together. Using a cookie dough scoop or a spoon, place the mixture on a cookie sheet. Press it down with either the back of the scoop or spoon to make them flat. Now the original recipe asked for a food dehydrator, however, since I don't own one I just set to oven to warm and put them in there to get rid of some of the moisture (about 45 minutes). Take them out of the oven and place in a container. Since you are actually not baking the cookies all the way, you need to keep them refrigerated. We eat them sometimes in the morning like granola, or just when I need a quick sweet fix in the evenings. If you are not a raisin person, you can replace it with your favorite dried fruit too, or just skip the raisins.